Alex Lloyd, a former teacher and head of sixth form in Bournemouth, has been drummed out of the profession for making remarks that many would find intemperate, even insulting, but few would seriously call career-ending.
In 2022, Lloyd led a PSHE lesson on so-called ‘honour’ killings. When two pupils giggled during his lesson, he shouted that honour-based abuse, including FGM, was ‘a serious matter’ that affected their culture specifically. According to a report by the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) in October 2025, Lloyd was visibly annoyed, insisting ‘this was real’ and ‘happening mainly because of [their] culture’.
He urged one pupil to ‘imagine this was your mum being killed’, told another she would be killed if she wore her outfit in Iran, and sarcastically referred to the ‘religion of peace’. Technically we don’t know which faith he was referring to, given the TRA saw fit to redact all references to what is presumably Islam in the report, but we can deduce.
The TRA decided that the ‘serious nature of Mr Lloyd’s conduct’ should be reflected in his punishment. Consequently he was banned from teaching indefinitely.
Without a doubt, Lloyd overstepped a professional boundary by making his criticisms needlessly personal. It is one thing to introduce pupils to critiques of a religion. It is another to home in on individuals of that faith, especially as a figure of authority. Singling out children in front of their peers and resorting to sarcasm is clearly wrong.
Nonetheless, the punishment seems disproportionate. In addition to a minor safeguarding lapse, Lloyd made a handful of remarks in a single lesson. The report notes his ‘good character’ and says ‘there was no evidence to show that he had made similar comments on other occasions’. It also acknowledges that he was well liked by his pupils. The comments were made in relation to a highly emotive topic, and Lloyd was evidently frustrated when pupils appeared not to take the matter seriously.
More concerningly, the TRA report also seems to suggest that openly discussing certain subjects could cause ‘harm’ – especially if associated with a particular culture or religion. Consider its condemnation of Lloyd’s remark that a pupil ‘would have been killed’ in Iran for what she was wearing:
‘The panel considered that it was inappropriate and unprofessional for Mr Lloyd to comment on what Pupil E was wearing and to express an extremely violent view of another culture which reinforced discriminatory stereotypes.’
Did Lloyd ‘express an extremely violent view’, or was he highlighting the extreme violence of a particular Islamic theocracy? Was he reinforcing ‘discriminatory stereotypes’, or commenting on the discrimination against girls and women embedded in Iran’s legal system?
Iran has compulsory veiling laws, which are harshly enforced by the Islamic Republic’s morality police and vigilantes. Women and girls are forced to cover their hair and risk torture, imprisonment, severe penalties and sometimes even death if they do not comply. They can expect violent backlash if they expose body parts below the neck other than hands and feet, or wear clothing that ‘incites the commission of sin by others’.
Lloyd’s comment, while blunt and overly personal, was grounded in reality. In 2022, a girl dressed like ‘Pupil E’ could indeed have faced lethal consequences in Iran. In that year alone, Mahsa Amini’s death in custody sparked widespread protests.
Talk of ‘discriminatory stereotypes’ ignores the fact that Lloyd was addressing state-sanctioned misogyny, not inventing it. It is also not ‘discriminatory’ to point out that honour-based violence, such as FGM, affects certain communities more than others. How can we possibly approach a solution if we cannot speak freely about this?
Policy Exchange has found that a ‘significant’ number of teachers self-censor for fear of causing religious offence, or even provoking violent reprisals. The trend was exacerbated by the Batley Grammar scandal in 2021, when a teacher was forced into hiding after showing pupils copies of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Irrespective of Lloyd’s behaviour, the TRA should be careful not to feed this culture of silence. Skirting around ‘culturally sensitive’ topics such as FGM, honour killings, forced marriage or grooming gangs for fear of causing offence is an affront to education.
School should be a place where young people can confront difficult realities – including honour-based abuse (HBA). In the year ending March 2024, there were 2,755 HBA related offences recorded by the police in England and Wales. But this data represents a fraction of the real offences. As the Domestic Abuse Commissioner claims, HBA often goes unreported because it is ‘clouded behind the guise of “culture” or “tradition”’.
The Met Police and Home Office seem at pains not to acknowledge which communities are most affected. But as we have learnt from the grooming gang scandal, turning a blind eye to factors such as culture, religion and ethnicity can have disastrous consequences.
Rather than obsess over the potential ‘harm’ caused by discussing these topics openly, it is surely time to focus on the actual harm suffered by victims of this abuse.
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